Not In Kansas
by Dr. Bruce Banner
Summary: What if Jane wasn't the one that got affected by the Aether, but Darcy instead. How would that affect the whole of what happened during The Dark World?


Jane and her date sit in a crowded restaurant with both of them hiding behind their menus. Jane occasionally looks over the top her menu contemplating her date. After another look over her menu she locks eyes with her date, she then immediately averts her eyes to looking back at the menu and raises it to cover her face completely. Her date smiles awkwardly to himself and writes on the napkin in front of him and then pushes it underneath Jane's menu. Jane looks down and sees 'Hi' written on the napkin.

"Hi." Her date says immediately after Jane has read the word.

Jane slowly pulls down her menu and folds it in her lap, awkwardly saying "Hi" back while smiling.

"So, what's the story with you?" he asks bluntly.

Jane shakes her head and retorts quickly. "Why does there have to be a story? There's no story"

"You spent the first ten minutes of our date hiding behind a menu that has three choices on it. It's either chicken, vegetarian, or fish, Jane. I think there's a story and I'm thinking the story involves a guy."

"It's complicated."

"Is he still around"

"No, he… went away." She trails off.

"I've been there. The going away. It's hard, isn't it? I was seeing a woman and she took a job in New York. Eventually, the distance killed it. And the fact that she kept sleeping with other dudes."

"NO!" Jane says over-dramatically. "Oh, so many."

Jane's date smiles as Darcy comes along to the table. "Hi. Could we get some wine, please?" He says assuming that she was a waitress.

"Sure, I'd love some." Darcy jokes.

Jane then introduces her to her date to stem the confusion. "Richard, this is Darcy."

Behind Richards back Darcy mouths 'Cute' to Jane while putting her thumb up.

"What are you doing here?" Jane asks Darcy rather rudely.

Darcy noisily drags a chair from another table to sit with Jane and Richard.

"Oh. Hello." Richard says awkwardly.

Darcy sits down on the chair and grabs one of the bread roles and a knife starting to butter the bread. "So, I show up at the lab/ your mom's house fully expecting you to be moping around in your pyjamas, eating ice cream and obsessing about…" Darcy clears her throat. "You know who."

"Ah." Richard says understanding that 'you know who' would be the man that had left Jane.

"But you're not." Darcy continues "You're wearing lady clothes. You even showered didn't you? You smell good."

"Is there a point to all this?" Jane asks slightly embarrassed that Darcy had hijacked her date and started saying this stuff about how she had been acting lately. "Because there really needs to be a point to all this."

"Right." Darcy puts her knife down on to the table with a clatter and reaches in to her pocket. "You know all that scientific equipment you don't look at anymore? You might want to start looking at it again." She hands over a small device to Jane. "This is the reason we came all the way out here." The machine in Jane's hands beeps rapidly.

"It's malfunctioning." Jane exclaims.

"That's what I said."

Jane stats banging the device against the table top.

"That's what I did. I thought you would do something a little more scientific." Darcy said, still picking at her buttered bread.

"I'm sure it's nothing." Jane said.

"It doesn't look like nothing." Darcy argues "it kind of looks like the reading that Erik was rambling about. Our friend Erik kind of went banana balls." Darcy explained to Richard.

"He's not interested." Jane states about Richard.

"I'm interested" Richard says at the same time that Jane says "I'm not interested."

"It's time for you to go now." Jane says to Darcy

"Okay." Darcy says thinking that the reason that Jane wanted Darcy to go was so that she could spend time with her date.

"Short but sweet." Richard says about Darcy's visit.

"She needs help."

The two of them open up their menu's and have a look at the food.

"I think I'm going to have the sea bass." Richard says.

"Sea bass, yeah. Sea bass is good." Jane says "Sea bass, sea bass, sea bass, sea bass, sea bass, sea bass. Sea bass…. Sea bass."

"Jane? Maybe you should stop saying 'sea bass' and go after your friend."

"This was so fun."

"I'll just stay here and say 'sea bass' alone." Richard says disappointed.

Jane puts her coat on as she was on the street outside the restaurant walking towards Darcy's old battered Volvo.

"And I hate you." Jane states as she gets in to the passenger seat of the car.

"What? I said he was cute." Darcy says with her mouth full of bread.

"Just shut up and drive." Darcy starts the engine and sets off.

"You need to take the next left." A voice from the back seat says startling Jane making her gasp in surprise.

"Who's he?" Jane asks Darcy.

"He's my intern."

"You have an intern?"

"Oh, yeah."

The intern from the back seat starts to speak. "Hello, Dr foster. It's such a great honour to be working with you."

"Right, I have to call, Erik."

"Oh, take a right." The intern tells Darcy. She suddenly swerves to the right nearly hitting a car causing them to honk their horn at her. "And a left" she turns left down a narrow road.

"I have totally mastered driving in London." Darcy states.

On the phone Jane starts talking. "Hi, Erik. It's me again. Where are you? I came here because you said you were onto something, and then you vanish."

They finally arrive at the place in which the scientific equipment picked up the anomaly.

"Come on, this is exciting." Darcy states. "Look! The intern is excited."

"Ian." The intern states.

"Do you want the phase-meter?" Darcy asks pointing at Jane.

"No." Jane states.

Darcy continues anyway. "Bring the phase-meter." She tells Ian, throwing him the keys to the car. "The toaster looking thing." She elaborates.

"Yeah. I know what the phase-meter is." He mumbles to himself.

As Jane walks towards the building Darcy picks up her phone and calls her. "How do I change the ringtone on this thing?" Jane asks when a hip-hop song comes on indicating that she is getting a call.

She answers the phone and Darcy speaks through it. "An astrophysicist with three degrees should be able to change her own ringtone.

"Why are you calling me?" Jane asks Darcy shaking her head at her.

"I didn't want to shout." She states quietly. "Intern says it's this way."

"'Ian.' My name's Ian."

"Shh." Darcy shuts him up.

The three of them walk into the building. They hear people walking and laughing. "Do either of you have hobo stab insurance, because I am not getting stabbed in the name of science." She then shouts out. "It's okay. We're Americans!"

"Is that supposed to make them like us?" Jane asks seriously.

A little boy and girl come from around a pillar and another from behind a bin. "They'll make it go away." The girl whispers to the boy. The boy shushes her.

"Oh, they're kids." Jane sighs in relief.

"Are you the police?" the girl asks. "No, we're scientists. Well, I am."

"Thanks." Darcy states, offended that even though she worked all these years with Jane she did not class Darcy as a scientist.

"We just found it." The boy states.

"Can you show us?" Jane asks.

The group of children take the group of adults to another room where there is a cement mixer, the boy goes over to it and picks it up with two finger. The mixer then stays in mid-air slowly turning over.

"That doesn't seem right." Darcy states.

The children then take the adults up a set of stairs showing them something else. Once they get half-way up the stairs, one of the boys drops a bottle over the edge. The bottle drops down but never hits the floor because it disappears a few meters of the floor.

"Where'd it go?" Jane asks. The little girl points up. The bottle suddenly appears above them and drops but disappears again before it hits the floor and then appearing above them again and repeating the cycle until one of the boys catch the bottle.

"That's… That's incredible!" Jane states excitedly. She then grabs a used can of Vimto from the floor and tries to do the same as they did with the bottle but it doesn't appear above them.

"What happened?" Jane asks.

"Sometimes they come back. Sometimes they don't." states the girl. Jane gets distracted thinking about what could be causing this occurrence when Darcy grabs the scientific device that she first gave Jane off of the phase-meter.

Darcy thought to herself, that they were showing similar readings to that in which they got from New Mexico two years before. Darcy starts to slowly walk off on her own, as Jane thinks, and Ian and the children experiment throwing stuff over the side of the railings. Unknowingly Ian throws Darcy's car keys over the edge for them to not come back.

Darcy walks down a corridor following the beeping that the device is making. She hears the wind whooshing and all the leaves behind her begin to move in the breeze.

She is then pulled unwillingly towards a doorway in which she never goes through as she suddenly disappears before that.

Darcy finds herself on the edge of some sort of cliff, nearly falling off she gasps. "Jane!" Darcy shouts. "I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."

Darcy then looks around not seeing Jane anywhere. She looks around the cave that the seemed to have landed, she sees a pillar in the middle of the room which she thinks looks different to the surroundings. Darcy lifts herself off of the floor and goes over towards the pillar, as she gets closer she notices a red glow from in-between the pillar. Uncertain of what she was seeing she puts her hand closer to the gap where the red light is emitted, the red light glowing and moving around like a liquid.

The red substance then jumps out from the gap as if it was alive and grabbed Darcy's arm. Darcy screams and tries to pull away but the gap suddenly closes with no red substance anymore.

Darcy rubs her hand where the substance had touched her and said to herself. "That was some weird shit." Suddenly she collapsed on to the floor.

Unknowingly to Darcy, the substance that had touched her had caused the remaining dark elves to awaken.

* * *

In Asgard, Thor walks across the rainbow bridge to meet Heimdall.

"You're late." Heimdall states to Thor.

"Merriment can sometimes be a heavier burden than battle." Thor states.

"Then you're doing one of them incorrectly." Heimdall jokes.

Thor chuckles. "Perhaps. How fare the stars?"

"Still shining. From here, I can see nine realms and ten trillion souls. Do you recall what I taught you of the convergence?"

"Yes. The alignment of the worlds. It approaches, doesn't it?"

"The universe hasn't seen this marvel since before my watch began. Few can sense it. Even fewer can see it. But while its effects can be dangerous, it is truly beautiful."

"I see nothing." Thor states.

"Or, perhaps, that is not the beauty you seek." They both chuckle.

"How is she?"

"She's quite clever, your mortal. She doesn't know it yet, but she studies the convergence as well. Even your mortal friends do as well."

"How is Lady Darcy?"

"She is still helping your mortal but…" Heimdall trails off. "What?" Thor asks.

"I can't see her."


End file.
